NSF2026: EAGER: Collaborative Research: Enhancing Employment for Neurodiverse Individuals through Next-Generation, AI-Enabled Assessments of Visuospatial Cognition

在美国，每年大约有7万名患有自闭症的新成年人寻找工作。与此同时，技术、金融、医疗保健和许多其他关键工作部门的雇主正在寻找高技能和高培训的人员来填补专门的职位。在学习研究部的DRK-12计划和综合活动办公室的NSF 2026基金计划的支持下，这项研究将调查新的工具和方法，以将自闭症谱系上的个人求职者与利用他们独特认知技能的就业机会相匹配，重点放在视觉空间认知技能上。许多工作需要强大的视觉空间认知技能，例如视觉检查和质量控制、过程监控、文档审查、监控、软件测试和数据可视化等等。自闭症谱系中的许多人在视觉空间认知技能方面表现出优势，但这些优势还没有被完全理解，包括人与人之间的差异，以及它们如何映射到与工作相关的能力上。了解自闭症或其他神经多样性疾病患者的视觉空间认知技能，通过使公共和私营部门能够更有效地招聘、选择和保留此类候选人，对于增强劳动力的神经多样性具有很高的潜在影响。这个NSF2026渴望的项目丰富了NSF2026 IDEA Machine获奖项目，利用人类思维的多样性。它寻求开发和评估集成的、支持人工智能的技术，以新的方式测量一个人的视觉空间认知技能，然后使用这些测量来预测工作场所相关任务的表现。在这个为期两年的项目中进行的研究将包括对自闭症谱系和神经典型个体进行大型先导性研究，参与者将接受几项视觉空间测试，有关他们行为的详细数据将使用眼球追踪器和相机等传感器记录下来。然后，数据挖掘和机器学习技术将被用来从这些丰富的行为数据流中提取有意义的模式，并将进行分析，以检查这些基本行为模式如何与现实的、与工作相关的活动中的个人技能和兴趣相对应。这项研究还将收集和分析来自行业合作伙伴的详细反馈，以确定特定的工作类型和行业，这些工作类型和行业将从招聘视觉空间认知技能较强的员工中受益。此外，该项目将在许多活动中吸收神经多元化的学生和工作人员，特别是通过让NSF研究培训项目支持的研究生参与神经多样性启发的科学与工程(NISE)，以及利用范德比尔特大学工程学院第一自闭症与创新中心神经多样性实习生的技能。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

Each year in the United States, approximately 70,000 new adults on the autism spectrum will seek employment. At the same time, employers in technology, finance, healthcare, and many other critical job sectors seek highly skilled and highly trained individuals to fill specialized positions. With support from the DRK-12 Program in the Division of Research on Learning and the NSF 2026 Fund Program in the Office of Integrated Activities, this research will investigate new tools and methods for matching individual job-seekers on the autism spectrum to employment opportunities that leverage their unique cognitive skills, with a focus on visuospatial cognitive skills. Numerous jobs require strong visuospatial cognitive skills, such as visual inspection and quality control, process monitoring, document review, surveillance, software testing, and data visualization, to name a few. Many people on the autism spectrum show strengths in visuospatial cognitive skills, but these strengths are not fully understood, including how they differ from person to person and how they map onto workplace-relevant capabilities. Understanding visuospatial cognitive skills in individuals on the autism spectrum or other neurodiverse conditions has high potential impact for enhancing the neurodiversity of the workforce by enabling more effective programs for the recruitment, selection, and retention of such candidates in the public and private sectors. This NSF2026 EAGER project enriches the NSF2026 Idea Machine winning entry Harnessing the Human Diversity of Mind. It seeks to develop and evaluate integrated, AI-enabled technologies for measuring a person’s visuospatial cognitive skills in new ways and then using these measurements to predict performance on workplace-relevant tasks. The research conducted during this two-year project will include conducting a large pilot study with individuals on the autism spectrum and neurotypical individuals, in which participants will be given several visuospatial tests, and detailed data about their actions will be recorded using sensors such as eye trackers and cameras. Then, data mining and machine learning techniques will be used to extract meaningful patterns from these rich streams of behavioral data, and analyses will be conducted to examine how these patterns in foundational behaviors map onto individual skills and interests in realistic, workplace-relevant activities. This research will also gather and analyze detailed feedback from industry partners to identify specific job types and sectors that would benefit from recruiting employees who are strong in visuospatial cognitive skills. In addition, this project will involve neurodiverse students and staff in many of its activities, in particular by involving graduate trainees supported by the NSF Research Traineeship in Neurodiversity Inspired Science & Engineering (NISE) and by leveraging the skills of neurodiverse interns at the Frist Center for Autism & Innovation at Vanderbilt University's School of Engineering.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.